Steve Burge talks about how OSToolbar came to be

Last week, I wrote about the new extension from Open Source Training: OSToolbar. This is new extension places video tutorials throughout your Joomla administrator area.

I talked to Steve Burge to hear a bit more about how and why they created the extension, and how it can help the different types of Joomla users.

Why did you create this extension?

We decided to create it after seeing how customers interacted with our current site where we provide training and support. A lot of Joomla beginners were also beginners at webdesign in general. They came to our site but had a lot of problems navigating the support forum where we answer Joomla questions.

Many had never used a discussion forum before. Webdesigners would sign their clients up for our training, but we weren't offering the easiest possible experience.

That got us thinking, not only about how we could reduce the complexity for them.

We thought about how many steps are involved with going to another site and realised it would always be complex for some. So we realised that instead of asking them to come to us, we should go to them. If the training is right inside their Joomla site, there are literally no steps they need to take. Just click on the training button and that's it.

How has the response been so far?

The response has been great so far. We've had nearly 100 beta testers giving feedback and we since we launched OSToolbar two weeks ago, customer demand has been great. We're already close to the launch of OSToolbar for Joomla 1.6 and we've lots of plans for cool new features.

What is your favorite thing about the extension and how does it improve how people use Joomla?

It improves things in different ways for different groups of people:

Beginners improve their Joomla experience by having training available without leaving their Joomla site

Webdesigners improve their Joomla experience by having someone else handle lots of the most basic questions.

Instead of emailing back and forth with the client and explaining how to create contact form, the OSToolbar can do that for them.

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